2012-07-10

posted by
coyote

You might think that semimythical coyotes, living as we do in this weird little undocumented fold of the time/cyberspace continuum, would be death on science and empirical evidence. I mean to say, if you want to get all facty 'n literal 'n stuff, our very existence might be open to debate. It might.

And if it were, we might be forced to cease pawing these tiresome screeds into this bloggy space. We might.

Fortunately for you, cowpoke, we're actually capable of reconciling our semimythical cosmology with facts. Which seems to place us a doglegged step or two ahead of the heavy thinkers in the nation's current government.

Most governments, one would think, are big enough and broadly-based enough to have:

enough confidence in their basic tenets;

enough actual, ummm, intelligence;

and failing either of those, certainly enough spin machinery;

that they would find torquing any, ummm, inconvenient actual facts to fit lame-o doctrine, after they hit the public arena, to be adequately efficient.

The current one, though, shows an unhealthy will to strangle any science project raising legitimate questions as to the basis of its cherished (if half-assed) party orthodoxies, right off at the roots. They prefer to spike them suckers with serious weedkiller before they see daylight. So much so, that 12-year-olds who enter science fairs may soon wish to check over their shoulders before they pick a topic. I digress.

I'm pretty sure that this is not a good thing for democratic discourse. We coyotes have always considered that the marketplace of ideas should be open to all comers. Only after they go on display there do we gnaw over the unworthy ones with our trademark snarky-puppy wit. I digress. Very probably not for the first time...

Apparently we coyotes are not the only ones disturbed by this. Today at lunch, a genetics conference became a springboard for a rather large march and demonstration by lab-coated geeks science types, featuring a butterfly-net-waving marshal, scythe-packing grim reaper, muted New Orleans snaxophone, and a black coffin symbolizing the death of public science. You know, the stuff that helps an informed citizenry make up its collective mind of the important issues facing the nation.

I applaud the effort, and the strong visuals, but I'm not sure they're enough. By now, the Stephen Harper Information Torquing machine has insulated its creators with such a thick-walled bubble that they figure the empirical reality where the rest of us live is strictly for suckers. They stand ready to ladle out plenty more delicious Kool-Aid to suck on... and we need public science to tell us when the stuff is laced.